ιғ тнe cloudѕ don'т clear

Somedays, sure, it was all robots and Daleks and psychotic aliens, but Myka had been more or less used to living her life in constant peril when she worked at the Warehouse. He'd warned her beforehand that it would be dangerous and that he would do all he could to protect her, but the unspoken truth was that all he could do might not be enough. Myka reminded him of her life before, the life she lived before him and her were them.

"Warehouse agent, remember? My options there are crazy, evil or dead. I have a feeling traveling with you might be an improvement."

And in many ways, it was. The TARDIS was an Artifact in of itself, although it was imbued with sentience beyond anything that had ever graced the Warehouse (other than, perhaps, the Warehouse itself; at least, that was what Myka believed). The TARDIS had come around the longer Myka traveled with the Doctor, in little ways. It was easier to find the bathroom these days, and the clothes in the wardrobe fit her better now. Myka didn't know if the TARDIS was starting to like her for what she offered to their daily adventures, or just because it started to realize that Myka wasn't there for any other reason than because she was in love.

Well, maybe that wasn't the only reason. But it was a big one.

When her birthday came up, he had gone out of his way to borrow a book she would love from one of the biggest intergalactic libraries time and space had ever seen. It wasn't like one of his liquid books; it was a psychic book, he had explained, not unlike the "choose your own adventure" variety that Myka remembered from her childhood.

The problem that came with living in a time machine, however, was that while time was relative to you, it didn't mean the rest of the universe didn't follow the rules.

"What is happening?" The TARDIS was rolling, sending Myka off-kilter, and she grabbed one of the railings in the console room. She was fresh out of the shower, her wet curls clinging to her face. She barely had time to wash the shampoo out when she felt the first hit.

"It's a Librarian convoy," the Doctor replied, rushing around the console to grab his viewscreen and stare at it.

"Why are librarians trying to kill us?" The TARDIS rocked again, and the Doctor was careful not to meet her eyes.

"Did I forget to mention that they have a very strict overdue policy?"

Sometimes, Myka suspected she might kill before anyone else had the chance.

Her adrenaline kicked in, though, and she bolted to the console. She had traveled with him long enough to get an idea of how just about everything on the TARDIS worked, at least mechanically. There was a lever for this, and a button for that, and between his sonic screwdriver and her Tesla, they had gotten out of worse situations.

"Can't we just... I don't know, call them and give them the book back?"

"The only reason they haven't destroyed us yet is because we still have the book."

"You checked out a book from a library whose overdue policy is execution?"

He still wasn't looking at her. "Well, technically, you checked it out."

Myka shrieked. "I can not believe you!"

"My account was already delinquent enough for another 13 regenerations!"

"Oh my God!"

Arguing wasn't doing much for their situation, and if Myka had to be honest, she wasn't actually angry. This was pretty much a typical Thursday afternoon for them, excitement and near death all in one. She grabbed hold of the console and inched around it, clamoring for the nearest lever. "Let's just jump back to right after we checked the book out..."

"No!" The Doctor slipped in front of her, blocking her access to the console. "Not that lever. Never that lever. Only I get to touch that lever."

"Oh, you arrogant-" The TARDIS rolled over again and Myka nearly fell off her feet, grabbing him for support. His hands slipped around her hips to steady her and he grinned at her.

"Come on, you have to admit this is fun."

They managed to lose the convoy by crash-landing the TARDIS into a moon's crater. The soil in the moon was made out of something that no human could pronounce (he didn't say it quite that nicely, but Myka got the drift), and it scrambled the Librarian sensors. They had repairs ahead of them, and then choices to make once those were done.

"You know I can fly the TARDIS just fine, right?" Myka said. She had been delegated to sitting-in-a-chair-near-the-console duty, passing him tools as he worked on fixing the console. "And just for the record, this isn't my fault. It's your fault."

"My fault? You should have checked the return slip."

"We live in a time machine!" His head popped up, and the look in his eyes made her both furious and deliriously happy. He was teasing her. The Doctor's head disappeared again and she glowered at him, trying to stay at least a little angry so he might grasp the gravity of the situation. "So, you won't let me fly the TARDIS. You won't help me fix her. Why am I here again, exactly? Am I just your human eye candy?"

A scoff came out from the under the console and his face appeared again, looking her over in that way that made her stomach flip. "You are perfectly acceptable eye candy." And again, back under the console.

Myka hopped out of the chair and ducked under with him. He had his sonic screwdriver out, repairing some wiring that hung out in bundles of sparking knots. She sat behind him, her arms curling around his waist as he worked. She leaned down and pressed her mouth to his back, feeling him tense beneath his clothing.

"What are you doing?" he hissed. Sometimes, it was way too easy.

"My job," she replied, her fingers brushing up his chest. She readjusted herself, licking her lips before she pressed them against his bare neck. "Since I'm just eye candy," she whispered.

"Myka, stop it. I'm trying to work."

"Me too." She was trying not to giggle, her breath hot against him as she caught his ear between her teeth. He hissed again, followed by a gentle moan when she pressed her lips to his neck again. He was still making a valiant effort to repair the wiring in front of him, but Myka was already counting down how long that would last. Every time his hands steadied she kissed him again, on his neck, or his temple, or his shoulder. He seemed to make quick work of the repairs after that, at least when his fingers weren't trembling, but Myka knew his speed had little to do with making her stop touching and everything to do with him wanting to touch her back.

Before long, he pulled her up from under the console and wrapped his arm around her waist, gesturing to the ship around them with the other. "See, good as new."

"But now what? The convoy is still out there. And the minute we leave... whatever about this moon whammied their sensors stops working and they're going to see us."

"That's the easy part." He bopped her nose with his finger, and she scrunched her face in response. "We're just going to go back to right after we checked the book out-"

"That was what I suggested in the first place!" Her voice was probably shrill enough to shatter the TARDIS front windows. There was a smirk on his face that Myka swore she was going to punch right off.

"Obviously. But I'm the Doctor, I can't let you think you have all the good ideas."

She shrugged out of his hold around her and crossed her arms, fuming. The Doctor, on occasion, seemed to sense when he had really pissed her off and his face fell. For as angry as she was at him, she hated when he looked like that. Putting a smile on his face had become one of the most important things she did every day, and seeing him sad made her heart break every time.

"Fine. Let's just go return the book." She was ready to storm off back to their room, or the library, or somewhere other than with him when he caught her arm and brought her back to him.

"Do you want to pull the lever?" His glance moved from her to the console.

"You're going to let me fly the ship?"

"I'm going to let you pull the lever," he clarified.

He had never been good at the words. Myka was, and she didn't hesitate to let him know how much she loved him, how much she cared. He was terrible with the words. But the actions, well... The actions he had nearly mastered, at least with her.

Myka positioned herself in front of the console and the Doctor pressed himself behind her. She could feel every inch of him flush with her as he guided her hand up, letting it rest on the handle. And then, he kissed her under her ear, his lips a feather across her skin, and her stomach did a flip. She tried to wrap her fingers around it but they trembled, his breath hot against her as he kissed her shoulder this time, then her back.

"What are you waiting for?" he asked her, kissing her arm.

"For you to stop," she told him, her voice wavering. She was too afraid to pull the lever down when he was touching her like that. Which, she then realized, was probably his plan. It was half getting even, half some kind of feral want that overcame the both of them when they got like this. As soon as his tongue dragged down the shell of her ear, she turned around to face him and the lever was completely forgotten for the time being.

Although they waited out the night on the moon's crater in a flurry of bedsheets (in between, of course, the Doctor yammering on about the moon's properties and the small colony that would inhabit it in 2000 years from now), reality set in the next day when they returned and found the convoy still laying in wait. Myka uttered a disapproving sigh.

She hadn't even had the chance to finish the book yet.

"Oh, come on." He escorted her back to the console, gesturing to the lever. "The book probably isn't going to return itself. Only a few races so far have invented that."

Myka snorted and let him push some coordinates in before she took a breath. She wrapped her hand around the handle, giving him another look as if making sure she still had his approval. He nodded at her.

"You need help?"

"I think I got it," she told him, her eyebrows lifting. "You're not a bad teacher... for alien eye candy, anyway." He grinned.

She pulled the lever, launching them into what was, no doubt, going to be another wild adventure.